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My Father's Funeral Oration
My Father's Funeral Oration
Redeemer. Amen.
fathers. They place small hands against large hands. Feel for
whiskers. See if the fingers of both their hands are able yet to
hand, upon the Son of man whom you yourself made strong.” It
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is no accident that the history of infant Israel is so saturated
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My father died vulnerable, even to the point of touch.
faltered. And the words of even his inner voice fell all but
The day we told my father his prognosis, the sun was high and
didn’t have any leaves. All that week the skies had been a cold
chalky gray, late snows fell, and for days the snows held on to
him when he told her it was winter. It had only been spring a
week and from his window it hadn’t been very obvious what
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season it was. The skies cleared the day we told him. I was
For a year now I have been thinking much about the quiet of
out at the quiet beauty of everything, and I want to stop the car
and walk out into the hills. Sometimes I do. My father was
perceive the light of stars that have long since passed. I haven’t
My father had just that sort of strength that we see in the world
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them. Sometimes these men called my father The Captain.
But I was a son who had very nearly grown into the stature of
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great sin of Adam and Eve was an act of self-nourishment, and
that the great sin of the Prodigal Son was not his wantonness
father for his ousia, which not only means substance, but also
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my likewise cries for ever new kings, to fight my wars, to
St. Augustine once wrote: “And now regarding love, which the
apostle says is greater than the other two - that is, faith and
hope - for the more richly it dwells in a man, the better the man
what he loves.
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My father believed much. And, as evidenced by this Funeral
(I think for a time he hoped I’d really love air filters, and that
one day I’d take over his business. He saw half of this hope
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If Christ came not to be served but to serve, my father indeed
giants and you will find the Lord to be a kind and loving Father.
Be not afraid.”
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I saw my father’s strength when he could no longer lift his
had taught—to help him, and he said simply: Yes. The end of
as his body and his mind allowed him. He fathered the sons in
whom my sisters saw his image. All the while giving over his
son learns from a father. I gave him a closer shave than I had
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ever given him, or myself. I rubbed in a cool cream over
man. And the light of his soul shone even after his passing.
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down the hall, at Mercy Hospital, during my father’s rehab
him Twinkle, Twinkle, Litter Star over and over, until I finally
was whispering the words and James was sleeping. For nearly
sure that I didn’t make too much noise, and that the rise and
anywhere and so he cried out for her with that little cry of his.
a baby her mother’s breast, this is the stuff faith is made of.
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eloquences. Just trusting nourishment. From the Giver of
me. The truth. The hope he had inside him, of which he was
himself once was, again he rests, alive, upon the breast of his
heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was
and they will be his people, and God himself, always, will be
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with them, as their God. He will wipe every tear from their
pain, for the old order has passed away.” “Behold, I make all
the Omega. The beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will
give a gift from the spring of life-giving water. The victor will
son.”
Amen.
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